


War / Cost

by Estel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Poe Dameron (Comics)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Minor Character Death, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, POV First Person, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Spoilers, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, Vignette, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21887641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estel/pseuds/Estel
Summary: [SPOILERS FOR SW:TROS] An exploration of who Poe is after the war is over and all of the people that supported him his young life as a hot-headed young man are gone.
Relationships: Kes Dameron & Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron & Leia Organa, Poe Dameron & Temmin "Snap" Wexley, Shara Bey & Poe Dameron
Kudos: 6





	War / Cost

We weren’t made for war.  
  
I used to not be sure, but I am now. Whatever cosmic event, passionate moment, or clap of unknowable power created us, we were not made for war.  
  
I get it now: I wasn’t.  
  
I ground my bones into knives to strike at my enemies. I burnt my nerves to flame brighter than the other soldier on fire in my crosshairs. I dismantled every part of myself and reassembled to spec as many times as I could. Still, none of it crafted me for war.  
  
While I whittled away my concepts of safety until only beating my enemies remained, others collected the shavings and quietly added them back to my cutting hand. A cycle of shaving and madness that would only ever end in sawdust and desolation.  
  
The hands that kept me whole knew it wasn’t for war.  
  
I was cut from the same stuff as my mother who burned brightly, but didn’t know she’d made a man who would dream about the universe falling apart in his hands.  
  
My father tried to puzzle me back together as much as I would let him. I knew him as the firm hand that kept me from spinning off into nothingness, but the truth was he saw in me a man wishing he’d been born to destroy.  
  
So certain that I was born to battle, I sought out my own wars that never satisfied the taste I was born with to undo my foes. I did my best to set myself ablaze in the ashes of a smothered war.  
  
The wars at my fingertips were unsatisfactory until I found the real thing.  
  
Then it was hard. Then it was too much like my father’s worried hand trying to calm the rage that came from an unhealing hurt. It wasn’t fast or bright or burning. It was slow and it cried deep into the night.  
  
Ahead of me was a woman with the face of war but the thundering heart of the last survivor. She was calculated and calm. She did everything she could to impart that to me with little avail because I was so certain that I was made for war. Not her careful war. My phoenix decent.  
  
Now I’m here in the ashes, reassembled a thousand times by loving hands, but where are they? Flamed out into stardust in the crosshairs of a nightmare. Kissed by eternity to fulfill what parents are truly made for: love.  
  
My father fell asleep a happy farmer who once knew the flashing terror of war. He left quietly, but his passing was announced by doctors and time.  
  
The General wore the burden of being heartsick and as long as I’ve known her, and I’ve always known that the cure and her journey’s end were intertwined.  
  
But the brother who taught me to knuckle up – that the hardest part of war was never in the cockpit vanished into stardust. Right at the darkest moment, just vanished like all pilots think they’re going to go.  
  
I wasn’t ready for any of them. No matter how many signs foretold it. No matter how many times I was told it in the plainest words. I’d built myself in the image of an unrelenting soldier, but the truth never let me go: I wasn’t made for war.  
  
Only I can put myself back together now. Others can, but I think its my turn to scrape up the shavings for someone else. Maybe the better answer is to put away the knife. Maybe it’s not to grind and burn and break.  
  
I don’t know the answer, because I just figured out: We weren’t made for war.

**Author's Note:**

> This is really an emotional response for me about Poe losing all the people who kept him on the straight and narrow as a young hot-headed pilot. He's had a lot of surrogate parents and squadron/family and now most of them are gone. Expect that this will not be the last reflection of losing Leia & Snap.


End file.
